


Together Weather

by Not_A_Valid_Opinion



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Disaster Twins, Gen, della has awareness issues, dewey whoops, donald has anger issues, fic set after the christmas special with dewy, gladstone is just vibing, i love them, scrooge still isn't very good with kids yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:47:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24844051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Not_A_Valid_Opinion/pseuds/Not_A_Valid_Opinion
Summary: Donald often felt like he was the only thing holding his family together.(That’s why he blamed himself so much when they fell apart, too.)Donald and Della get into a fight.
Relationships: Della Duck & Donald Duck, Della Duck & Donald Duck & Gladstone Gander, Della Duck & Scrooge McDuck, Donald Duck & Scrooge McDuck
Comments: 4
Kudos: 89





	Together Weather

**Author's Note:**

> Short summary, short fic. Probably the shortest I've ever written, more of a drabble than anything. I love both Donald and Della, disaster twins for the win.

Donald often felt like he was the only thing holding his family together. 

(That’s why he blamed himself so much when they fell apart, too.)

He and Della were inseparable when they were younger, siblings as they were. Still, of course, siblings didn’t have to be so tight-knit. 

Donald hardly left Della alone. He couldn’t. 

She kept running off into danger, and Donald didn’t want to see her hurt. It wasn’t just his responsibility to care for his twin sister- he didn’t _want_ her hurt. And danger followed her because she chased after it with a sort of thrill he could never understand, even if he wished he could, even if he’d never admit it. 

Scrooge was a good influence, there, and a bad one too. It depended entirely on which twin you’d ask. 

Della could take care of herself- that much was proved with each new adventure she shoved herself headfirst into, coming out usually unscathed regardless of if Donald had to intervene. Scrooge never let her get hurt. Scrooge was good in that sense, for he’d drag her- them, by default- into danger, but they’d always make it out okay because he was _Scrooge McDuck, an’ ya best remember it!_

Donald, still, when he felt the heavy need to consider himself as such, was the link keeping the family together. Sure, that might sound pompous out loud, but that’s why it would never go spoken out loud. It was the truth to him, because he’d seen it firsthand. When Della ran into danger, she left people behind. 

She never seemed to realize she was doing it, but she did. 

She’d run off, then look back to make sure Donald was following, then keep going once she got her confirmation. She cared. She wanted them to stay together, like a good sister and a better friend. But it wasn’t enough. Not when Donald wasn’t following, refused to, and she’d go anyway- he’d follow, then, because he knew it wasn’t up to him. She’d go anyway. 

And she was fast. She moved faster than everything, it seemed, even if time didn’t stop for her to do so without repercussions. 

It started to hurt when she forgot their mother’s birthday. Hortense and Quackmore celebrated it alone, without either of their children, and when Della got home too late from her adventure with Scrooge to notice, Donald already had a gift tucked under his bed for him to pull out and say was from the both of them. He had an apology for being late down to a T, one that didn’t throw her or Scrooge under the bus. He had a theatrical flair as he handed over the gift and sent a wink to Della, telling her to follow along, just enough for her to catch on and realize what she’d forgotten. 

She told him afterwards, in private. 

“I was so… ugh. I’m sorry, Don. I got too driven.” 

“You just need to slow down. Chill, yano? Take some time to remember the little things, and why they’re worth remembering,” Donald explained, his hand motion a calm wave, and he plucks at his guitar strings idly as he speaks. He never used to think about keeping them together before a certain Christmas and a certain relative from the future reminded him of why family was so important. Della had always known, and him preaching to her would never come off sounding right, even when he meant it. She scoffs. 

“Song lyrics?” 

“I’m jammin’. Songs gotta spit truth for it to move people. Did it move you?”  
A laugh. It might feel sincere then, but it’ll instill doubt in his mind later that night, lying awake in bed. “Work on it.” 

Donald has an angry body. 

He loves Della, loves his parents, even loves Scrooge because he makes Della so happy (even if he doesn’t love the repercussions of that, either). He loves his friends and bandmates, Jose and Panchito, even if they haven’t fully formed a band yet. He loves the water that flows all throughout the city in pools and rivers, and how natural it all looks. He loves playing guitar, and he loves it when Della sits and listens without him asking her too. 

But he doesn’t love his temper, or how often he loses it. The more he gets dragged around by Della and left to pick up the pieces- call an ambulance after she’s set herself on fire, call the fire department after she’s… well, call the police when she goes missing (returned safe and sound, save for his heart, beaten beyond relief)- the more he starts to feel his anger boil. 

It comes out a lot. Bad strum on his guitar, rage smash it. Now he has to save up the money to buy a new one. Ask Scrooge for help, rage again when he refuses because he’s the one who smashed it and he has to learn not to do that (what Scrooge says is this- what he _means_ is “It’s mah money an’ ya canne have at it”). Della keeps running off, and he stays behind for once, too busy trying to fix his guitar, trying to manage his own breathing (in for four breaths, out for eight, bottling up anger feels so great)- and she finally comes back _hurt-_

Well. He loses it, then. 

It’s really only a scratch. She says she’ll have a cool scar on her shoulder after it’s healed, and Scrooge has clearly patched it up well with stitches. 

But she had to have _stitches._ And Donald hadn’t been there. And ya, he loses his temper. Screams at Della for hours, Scrooge for more. Scrooge’s butler has to kick him out with the threat of calling the cops, and their parents have to pull him away from Della (“We are just as upset as you that she’s hurt, Son, but this has to be a conversation!”)

Instead of trying to pull him along for adventures, Della starts leaving without telling him, after that. Now, Donald has to follow after in a way that feels more pointed, more aimed at her- a sibling argument without words on her part, and with gritted teeth and stomped feet after her on his. 

They visit, on some calmer days, the farm of grandmother Elvira Coot. Though, it’s not really her they visit; rather, their pompous cousin, Gladstone Gander. 

Donald hates him, but one way or another- Donald holds the family together. 

Della is irritated by Gladstone most of the time, as he is easily describable as “irritating at best”, though she manages to look past it all and enjoy time with the guy, looking for ways to spend their days together without excluding the Gander. Donald, however, can’t help but openly hate the guy. Where Donald had the misfortune of falling into puddles and getting slapped in the face with leaves, the puddles would move out of Gladstone's way, guided by a wind that loved him, and that he called “luck”. 

It was _infuriating._ As a kid, he didn’t know how to deal with it. Della and him would play while Donald would grumble along behind them, or stay out of their way altogether. Keep the family together, sure. He could do that. But he couldn’t stop himself from tripping over tree roots as he trudged, and he couldn’t find a better word for himself than “unlucky”. 

That went for each side of the coin, in more ways than simple actions. 

“Buddy D, come join us? The water is wet. A good thing!” 

Donald has to fight off the urge to plug his ears. As it was, he’s crossing his arms to physically restrain himself. “No thanks. I’ll go in, and then get bit in the ass by a crab.” 

Della, doing laps in the water of the lake near to the farm behind Gladstone (who sat ceremoniously on his comically large floaty, which apparently he just “found one day” completely inflated and perfectly fitting of his size), stops to cry out, “come on, wimp! I’m not gonna drag you in!” 

No, she wasn’t. She hadn’t in a while. Donald grips his arms even tighter, then releases them quickly to crack his knuckles and take a running dive. As he goes, he trips on a rock he _swears_ was not there at first, and goes tumbling into the water with a crash rather than a sploosh, like he’d hoped. He hears Gladstone suck in a breath with an, “Oooeesh!” That could only be a reaction to a pain he’d _surely_ never felt before in his life, his voice minimal behind Della’s laughter. He spits out water and stalks out of the lake in embarrassment. 

Della follows after. She grabs her towel off the tree she’d hung it on and wraps it around him, then rubs it roughly enough to shake him for a laugh. “Aw, come on, bro! It wasn’t that bad. It was, well actually it was kind of impressive. Where’d you learn to roll like that?” 

Donald refuses to give her a glance, and continues to power walk away from her. 

She stops following. From behind him, he hears her say, “I’m sorry I laughed.” 

He stops. Turns to her, and his voice comes out far more pitiful than he’d intended. “Do you not care that I’m falling behind?” 

More than his anger, he has to stop himself from saying _that you’re leaving me behind._

Perhaps it is that Donald is young, and hasn’t yet grown into a body that could keep up or a mind that has learned it’s not worth it. Right now, he _is_ young, and he wants to be a part of his sister's life. 

And he thinks, that must be too much to ask for. It must be, because it seems so _difficult._

Della is young too, the same age as him, just a few minutes younger. That hardly seems to matter though. She looks so much older, in that moment, as she sighs. 

“This isn’t about the scene back there, is it? You’ve been holding something in for a while.” 

She waits. Her arms are crossed, but it’s so much more poised than his stance earlier, and he puffs out his chest as though it were a challenge. 

“Fine. You want me to say it? You just- you just can’t catch a hint! You keep running into things, so fast, and I- I can’t keep up! You’re going to get hurt! You’re going to hurt someone else, and you’ve-” he bites his tongue, thinking better of it, but he is young, and he is angry, and he is not known for biting his tongue, now, is he? “-you’ve already hurt me. And you don’t even notice.” 

“... Donald. I do notice.” 

Donald unclenches his hand, which had folded inward at some point. He blinks dumbly, and Della loses her strict poise and instead sags into the grass. He watches her physically deflate into the earth as though she could become a part of it, standing out so strictly against the grass that it seems a wasted effort, though neither could care much to begin with. 

She closes her eyes. “I do notice. You’re always- you’re always _there,_ Donald. Always. Except for when I need you, yano? You want to follow me into danger when you don’t want to, to- to keep me safe or something. But I’ve told you I don’t need protection, I have proved to you I don’t! But you don’t trust me,” her voice is angry, too. She is not a perfect person, either. “And you’re only with me when you think I’ll- I’ll make a fool of myself or something! You’re not there when I want someone to just be with most of the time. Since when did I become your responsibility instead of your friend?” 

Donald sits with her on the grass. “You are my friend, you idiot. That’s why it sucks that you’re leaving me to run off and-” 

“I can have fun! It doesn’t have to be your fun! I don’t have fun playing the guitar like you, and you don’t have fun going on adventures with Scrooge and me. We like different things! But I don't force myself to enjoy playing an instrument I suck at, while you keep forcing yourself to tag along. And you say it's to keep me safe or whatever-” 

Donald gaps. He recalls trying many times to get her to join his band, but she’d never been interested and eventually he’d dropped it. Once he had, she’d started to sit in while he practiced and listen to him play. As long as she was there, it didn’t matter, and the issue was finite in his mind. “I never said that!” 

“You did!” She whines, sounding more frustrated than angry. She looks about ready to pull the feathers out of her head. “When I hurt my shoulder, you screamed it for the whole neighborhood to hear! We got a noise complaint that Mom and Dad had to pay off and everything.” 

He hardly recalled what he yelled, that day. His anger took over him, and he’d screamed so many things- now that he thought about it, maybe he had. “Wanting to keep me safe isn’t the same as happy, yano. I’ll always have time for you. You gotta trust me to be my own person, though. It’s driving me up the walls.” 

Donald thinks about this. “We’re outside,” he settles on. 

“Wise guy,” she puffs. 

They stand statically for a while. Donald taps his pointer fingers together, thinking. Della watches him carefully, waiting for a response. “Della, I… I’m sorry. I do trust you, even if I’ve been lousy at showing it. I like hanging out with you, and going on adventures, too. You just... go so fast. I don’t want you to get hurt, but you’re right. And I’m sorry. I don’t know why I get so angry.” 

She walks over to him, leans on his shoulder. Any tension from her has eased away as though it were never there to begin with, and Donald can’t help but let her own comfort wash over to him with a lengthy exhale. “You need a better outlet. I’ve got adventuring, and you’ve got your band, but you gotta make those songs _angrier._ Maybe write a few about our arguments, see if that helps. You said true songs hit harder, didn’t you?” 

It’s an interesting thought. He smiles. “Ya. They do. Thanks, Della.” 

“Ya… and listen, I’m sorry, too. You know I’d never leave you behind, right? At least, not on purpose. I’ll always come back to you, bro. That’s what family is- one big boomerang ya just can’t quite shake off.” 

“Like the acne around your bill?” 

She kicks him. He laughs. 

They’ll work on it.

**Author's Note:**

> Gladstone is just vibing.  
> Also- this fic is set while they're both 11ish, 12ish years old, and while they're disagreeing here I figured I'd just mention that they will grow to become more open to each others hobbies. Della would probably be awesome at the guitar, if she gives it ago in another few years (god I wanna see della play the guitar in the show, that would SLAP), because people grow and change. Donald likes adventuring in this story but he likes going at his own pace- he learns to be more daring for his own sake as he grows. This is just a drabble, so it's less intense than my other fics and especially my other dt17 fics, and it's cut off before growth happens and rather just as we're starting to see it. I wanted it to be open enough y'all could fill in the blanks between this and canon, as much as you wanted to, if even lol.   
> Anyway find me @ dasicality on tumblr and insta for art and also conversations if y'all wanna say hi


End file.
